I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly. (ISV)
My purpose is to give life in all its fullness. (NLT)
- Jesus, John 10:10b
A couple great quotes from Wild at Heart, by John Eldredge:
The place where God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.
- Frederick Buechner
Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that; because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
- Gil Bailie
My mind went this subject this past week because of this TedTalk on finding happiness in this ecstatic state of "flow". Interesting that the root of ecstasy means to stand beside. In fact when one is in an instense state of ecstasy the brain does not have enough processing capacity (only about 100 bits per second) to handle self awareness; you lose conciousness of the fact that you are tired, or hungry, problems at home, etc. And this is the state when one is immersed in creativity - when both your challenges and your skills are higher than your everyday average in both those areas (a unique set point for each person).
How does it feel to be in "flow" - 7 characteristics
1. Completely involved in what we are doing - focused, concentrated.
2. A sense of ecstasy - of being outside everyday reality.
3. Great inner clarity - knowing what needs to be done, and how well we are doing.
4. Knowing that the activity is doable - that our skills are adequate to the task.
5. A sense of serenity - no worries about oneself, and a feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of the ego.
6. Timelessness - thoroughly focused on the present, hours seem to pass by in minutes.
7. Instrinsic motivation - whatever produces flow become its own reward.
Some great quotes by CEO's on the subject of happiness and work:
I've always wanted to be successful. My definition of being successful is contributing something to the world...and being happy while doing it.... You have to enjoy what you are doing. You won't be very good if you don't. And secondly, you have to feel that you are contributing something worthwhile...if either of these ingredients are absent, there's probably some lack of meaning in your work.
- Norman Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin
Look for your passion. what make syou excited? What turns you on?...Go towards companies that you really like, really admire...What do you admire about them? Spend, if you can, an internship there, or just knock on the door and say: 'Hey, can I work here for cheap?'...Find organizations that move your spirit if you can. Work along side them... And have fun. There's so much fun to be had...When you spend 95% of your life in a work environment, it can't be dour.
- Anita Roddick
The first "Purposes of Incorporation" of Sony:
To establish a place of work where engineers can feel the joy of technological innovation, be aware of their mission to society, and work to their heart's content.
- Masaru Ibuka
Monday, November 10, 2008
Saturday, November 1, 2008
An old letter to Bud on Lewis
I just found this old letter to my dad, Pastor Bud Sparling. I wrote this from Lakewood, WA. I don't recall the response or any further discussion.
--------------------------------
Dad-
Part II of your Christmas 2004 present – something I believe you always enjoy: intelligent (?) conversation with your son….
The attached article was the cover story in the current Christian Research Journal – I naturally thought of you when I saw it! Reading it, I was struck realizing just how deeply Lewis’s ideas have influenced my own. He is an author whom I which to read so much more of, that I easily forget how much of him I’ve previously absorbed.
I look forward to your comments on the article; mine are below.
(Perhaps you should wait on reading these until after you’ve read the article.)
p.3 Challenges of the Common Hall. Mueller’s insight that many Christians today are “reluctant to make any commitment to a confession or a congregation” provides insight into the rise of the “mega,” and I would argue mega-shallow, churches. There’s a church up here that has an entire health club in it; I’m certain this not what Lewis had in mind in his metaphor of “fires and chairs and meals.” I think he was speaking more of Christ’s “food” that we know nothing about. Still these churches, like Lewis’ writings, are drawing the masses in – so finding the balance between evangelism and discipleship continues.
Perhaps Lewis’s metaphor of the Common Hall could have utility in your EPC pastor’s discussions toward making your denomination “relevant”.
My singular reaction concerning all three of Mueller’s main criticisms of Lewis is that Mueller sees the world from the deep center of the evangelical tradition while Lewis does not. In this regard Mueller’s approach typifies Richard Foster’s fourth Potential Peril of the evangelical tradition: “the tendency toward bibliolatry.” I think Lewis’ acceptance of the ineffable character of God and his embrace of the mysteries of the faith are parts of what make his writing so attractive and ultimately so strong. His general tone is one of suggestion, not discovered fact.
Consequently Mueller can hardly objectively ask if scripture is inerrant – his mind is not only made up, scriptural reference is the ONLY basis he makes an argumentative appeal to! Obviously this is a faith issue, a fundamental assumption and Mueller’s arguments would all be stronger if he would state this assumption up front.
p.4 Is Scripture Inerrant? Mueller says that Lewis “added a layer of subjectivity” to his understanding of scripture. I would ask how would he suggest is it possible for any reader to do otherwise? That’s what readers do – interpret the scribbles on a page given their own unique set of experiences and education. He clearly has done so himself with his interpretation of “today” from Luke 23:43. (p.5) Lewis clearly explained his views on the nature of time elsewhere in M.C.; Mueller must embrace the totality of Lewis’ world view when analyzing it.
Well…that’s about it for now. Kids are calling, “Come play Dad!” I must to them,
--------------------------------
Dad-
Part II of your Christmas 2004 present – something I believe you always enjoy: intelligent (?) conversation with your son….
The attached article was the cover story in the current Christian Research Journal – I naturally thought of you when I saw it! Reading it, I was struck realizing just how deeply Lewis’s ideas have influenced my own. He is an author whom I which to read so much more of, that I easily forget how much of him I’ve previously absorbed.
I look forward to your comments on the article; mine are below.
(Perhaps you should wait on reading these until after you’ve read the article.)
p.3 Challenges of the Common Hall. Mueller’s insight that many Christians today are “reluctant to make any commitment to a confession or a congregation” provides insight into the rise of the “mega,” and I would argue mega-shallow, churches. There’s a church up here that has an entire health club in it; I’m certain this not what Lewis had in mind in his metaphor of “fires and chairs and meals.” I think he was speaking more of Christ’s “food” that we know nothing about. Still these churches, like Lewis’ writings, are drawing the masses in – so finding the balance between evangelism and discipleship continues.
Perhaps Lewis’s metaphor of the Common Hall could have utility in your EPC pastor’s discussions toward making your denomination “relevant”.
My singular reaction concerning all three of Mueller’s main criticisms of Lewis is that Mueller sees the world from the deep center of the evangelical tradition while Lewis does not. In this regard Mueller’s approach typifies Richard Foster’s fourth Potential Peril of the evangelical tradition: “the tendency toward bibliolatry.” I think Lewis’ acceptance of the ineffable character of God and his embrace of the mysteries of the faith are parts of what make his writing so attractive and ultimately so strong. His general tone is one of suggestion, not discovered fact.
Consequently Mueller can hardly objectively ask if scripture is inerrant – his mind is not only made up, scriptural reference is the ONLY basis he makes an argumentative appeal to! Obviously this is a faith issue, a fundamental assumption and Mueller’s arguments would all be stronger if he would state this assumption up front.
p.4 Is Scripture Inerrant? Mueller says that Lewis “added a layer of subjectivity” to his understanding of scripture. I would ask how would he suggest is it possible for any reader to do otherwise? That’s what readers do – interpret the scribbles on a page given their own unique set of experiences and education. He clearly has done so himself with his interpretation of “today” from Luke 23:43. (p.5) Lewis clearly explained his views on the nature of time elsewhere in M.C.; Mueller must embrace the totality of Lewis’ world view when analyzing it.
Well…that’s about it for now. Kids are calling, “Come play Dad!” I must to them,
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Fort Leavenworth
27 degree Kansas after 3 and a half years in Miami is a shock to the system; especially when the airline loses your luggage containing your only coat. The short sleeved silk shirt doesn’t do much except garner comments for "bravery." Nonetheless, it was truly gorgeous. Rolling hills resplendent in rich fall color, the cold looking "Mighty Mo" marching as surely as ever, clearly marking the boundary between Missouri and Kansas. The familiar grey steel bridge welcomes one back to Leavenworth, home not only to the biggest of Big Houses, but also to "The Army's Intellectual Center." Fortress Leavenworth initially feels like it’s stuck in a time warp. There’s a certain sense of familiarity and security that accompanies any return here. But upon closer inspection, much has changed.
Red brick abounds along tree lined streets, newly paved in recent years. This post's infrastructure, as with most of the Army, has benefitted greatly from GWOT spending. The impressive new Lewis and Clark Center, home since last year to the Command and General Staff College, now sits massively in the place where a deep cut once ran through the post's terrain. Inside, the college always seems to be in state of flux, scrambling to keep the curriculum relevant and challenging. Contractors are always ripping apart this or that room to enable yet another new program or system that will facilitate the understanding of, and preparation for future battlefields.
Hoge Barracks, the BOQ, smells the same as ever. The mind floods with vivid memories of countless trips here, countless nights spent studying. How many different generations of microprocessors have I used in these rooms, now wired with high speed internet access? The plumbing remains the same. Same instant coffee in the lobby. Same stream of students rushing to get to class in the morning. They still don backpacks, but different cargo. No more paper maps, acetate overlays and Field Manuals, now they carry laptops and blackberries. Same thermos of coffee, but different uniforms. The new grey we've donned to fight in the streets of Iraq and Afghanistan has finally displaced the green Battle Dress Uniform designed to hide amongst the trees of Germany's Fulda gap. A couple years ago the new blouses, pants and boots appeared quickly, but they were oddly intermixed with forest green accessories. Now those have caught up: gortex jackets, high tech pile sweaters and overcoats and even matching ruck sacks all in the new digital grey pattern abound.
And now there's one more recognizable change: a combat patch on almost every right shoulder. An empty right shoulder today is as rare as a combat patch was when I entered the Army in the 80's. Virtually every one of these warriors has done at least one, and many two or more, combat tours. And by being here, they've committed to more time in service and most likely yet more time in combat. These brand new majors don't know a peace time Army, many of them served their first tours as lieutenants in the Balkans prior to 9/11 and since, they've been back and forth repeatedly to war. They carry with them a seriousness about their business, they’re certainly more practical than I was at their age. They've buried too many soldiers and lost friends. These men and women are the hope of our present conflicts. They will be our Battalion and Brigade commanders before this era of fighting has ended. Their innovation will perfect the tactics that work in today’
Outside the gates, the people in middle America remain as friendly and patriotic as ever. Whether I wanted to or not, I struck up a conversation with every person I bumped into from airline agents to janitors. And this isn't a phony "how can I help you?", Customer service kind of friendly. It’s a "if you're not doin’ anything you can come over for Sunday supper" kind of friendly. I was stopped three times in 12 hours and genuinely thanked for my service to the country. All three times I wasn't wearing a uniform. These people go out of their way to look for soldiers. The warrior mentality, the service ethos is close to home for them literally because so many from this part of the country have worn the uniform. And, these days, many have neatly folded flags next to pictures of loved ones, now gone or wounded, above their fireplace.
My last night in Leavenworth, after hot wings and lite beer, I stood shivering in a parking lot with the four remaining SAMS students who had hung on the longest. I had come here, at their invitation, and spent the day talking about US Southern Command and my experiences as a planner. What a blessing to be able to give back a little bit to these soldier scholars. I've been back four times in the six years since I graduated the Army's premier planning school. Each year the students get younger. This year, this night their posture, their questions, their faces revealed their fear. They understand the seriousness of their task. One year from now they'll be developing plans and writing orders that others will execute. No simulations, just reality.
With minds forged here in America’s heartland, I know they’ll succeed.
Red brick abounds along tree lined streets, newly paved in recent years. This post's infrastructure, as with most of the Army, has benefitted greatly from GWOT spending. The impressive new Lewis and Clark Center, home since last year to the Command and General Staff College, now sits massively in the place where a deep cut once ran through the post's terrain. Inside, the college always seems to be in state of flux, scrambling to keep the curriculum relevant and challenging. Contractors are always ripping apart this or that room to enable yet another new program or system that will facilitate the understanding of, and preparation for future battlefields.
Hoge Barracks, the BOQ, smells the same as ever. The mind floods with vivid memories of countless trips here, countless nights spent studying. How many different generations of microprocessors have I used in these rooms, now wired with high speed internet access? The plumbing remains the same. Same instant coffee in the lobby. Same stream of students rushing to get to class in the morning. They still don backpacks, but different cargo. No more paper maps, acetate overlays and Field Manuals, now they carry laptops and blackberries. Same thermos of coffee, but different uniforms. The new grey we've donned to fight in the streets of Iraq and Afghanistan has finally displaced the green Battle Dress Uniform designed to hide amongst the trees of Germany's Fulda gap. A couple years ago the new blouses, pants and boots appeared quickly, but they were oddly intermixed with forest green accessories. Now those have caught up: gortex jackets, high tech pile sweaters and overcoats and even matching ruck sacks all in the new digital grey pattern abound.
And now there's one more recognizable change: a combat patch on almost every right shoulder. An empty right shoulder today is as rare as a combat patch was when I entered the Army in the 80's. Virtually every one of these warriors has done at least one, and many two or more, combat tours. And by being here, they've committed to more time in service and most likely yet more time in combat. These brand new majors don't know a peace time Army, many of them served their first tours as lieutenants in the Balkans prior to 9/11 and since, they've been back and forth repeatedly to war. They carry with them a seriousness about their business, they’re certainly more practical than I was at their age. They've buried too many soldiers and lost friends. These men and women are the hope of our present conflicts. They will be our Battalion and Brigade commanders before this era of fighting has ended. Their innovation will perfect the tactics that work in today’
Outside the gates, the people in middle America remain as friendly and patriotic as ever. Whether I wanted to or not, I struck up a conversation with every person I bumped into from airline agents to janitors. And this isn't a phony "how can I help you?", Customer service kind of friendly. It’s a "if you're not doin’ anything you can come over for Sunday supper" kind of friendly. I was stopped three times in 12 hours and genuinely thanked for my service to the country. All three times I wasn't wearing a uniform. These people go out of their way to look for soldiers. The warrior mentality, the service ethos is close to home for them literally because so many from this part of the country have worn the uniform. And, these days, many have neatly folded flags next to pictures of loved ones, now gone or wounded, above their fireplace.
My last night in Leavenworth, after hot wings and lite beer, I stood shivering in a parking lot with the four remaining SAMS students who had hung on the longest. I had come here, at their invitation, and spent the day talking about US Southern Command and my experiences as a planner. What a blessing to be able to give back a little bit to these soldier scholars. I've been back four times in the six years since I graduated the Army's premier planning school. Each year the students get younger. This year, this night their posture, their questions, their faces revealed their fear. They understand the seriousness of their task. One year from now they'll be developing plans and writing orders that others will execute. No simulations, just reality.
With minds forged here in America’s heartland, I know they’ll succeed.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
CS Lewis on Sehnsucht: Joy - the serious business of Heaven
A couple months ago we switched churches; the much more intimate West Pines Community Church is suiting our family well. Flamingo just wasn't for us any longer - we continue to pray for them and their passion for reaching the South Florida culture "as it is."
We arrived at West Pines just in time for a new 6 week series on Heaven. It was wonderful! Pastor Jon's sermon one week really struck a chord with me, resurrecting old, rich memories of CS Lewis' ideas about heaven. It took me a few weeks but I finally looked up these quote and posted them on Jon's Facebook page (my other new experiment):
Jon -
sorry its taken me so very long to get these CS Lewis quotes to you...better late than never. The two points that stick in my mind concerning Lewis' vision of heaven are (1) that the central experience of heaven will be "joy" and (2) his description of joy as unsatisfied longing (or Sehnsucht). As always, his actual words are better than my memory:
"In this world everything is upside down. That which, if it could be prolonged here, would be a truancy, is likest that which in a better country is the End of ends. Joy is the serious business of Heaven." - Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, p.93
"In a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else...it is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them: the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again. Apart from that and considered only in its quality, it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But then it is a kind we want. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and pleasure often it." - Surprised by Joy, pp17-18
And one of my all time favorite Lewis passages, that I had not previously linked to the idea of Heaven:
"If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." - The Weight of Glory, pp3-4
We arrived at West Pines just in time for a new 6 week series on Heaven. It was wonderful! Pastor Jon's sermon one week really struck a chord with me, resurrecting old, rich memories of CS Lewis' ideas about heaven. It took me a few weeks but I finally looked up these quote and posted them on Jon's Facebook page (my other new experiment):
Jon -
sorry its taken me so very long to get these CS Lewis quotes to you...better late than never. The two points that stick in my mind concerning Lewis' vision of heaven are (1) that the central experience of heaven will be "joy" and (2) his description of joy as unsatisfied longing (or Sehnsucht). As always, his actual words are better than my memory:
"In this world everything is upside down. That which, if it could be prolonged here, would be a truancy, is likest that which in a better country is the End of ends. Joy is the serious business of Heaven." - Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, p.93
"In a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else...it is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them: the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again. Apart from that and considered only in its quality, it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But then it is a kind we want. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and pleasure often it." - Surprised by Joy, pp17-18
And one of my all time favorite Lewis passages, that I had not previously linked to the idea of Heaven:
"If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." - The Weight of Glory, pp3-4
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